Hewlett Packard Company, assignee of the present invention, has developed a direct communications technology, JetSend, for multiple devices within a network environment. For example, network devices such as printers, scanners, and digital cameras are rendered with the ability to communicate independently of any specific server or application by using Internet Protocol (IP) addressing over an intranet or the Internet. Details of such JetSend technology are described at Applicant's website: www.jetsend.com, herein incorporated by reference.
JetSend enabled devices use a JetSend protocol to communicate. However, devices that use the JetSend protocol will only communicate with other JetSend devices. Therefore, there exists a need to enable communication between heterogeneous devices in order to render inter-operability between such devices.